


The Chance to Begin Again

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Himawari's condition is becoming more and more apparent, and, concerned, her grandmother brings her to a priest to discover what the problem is. It's there that Himawari has her first experience of hitsuzen, though she herself is unaware.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chance to Begin Again

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ February 28, 2009.

“Thank you for being willing to see us,” the old woman said with a polite nod. The little girl stood beside her, face sagging with pain unfamiliar with such a young face.  
  
“It’s fine,” the priest said with a kind nod. “What seems to be the trouble?”  
  
“This child,” the elderly woman began, looking down at her granddaughter with a look of sympathy and thinly veiled fear. She reached out a hand, and it hovered over the girl’s shoulder, as if she wished to touch her but dared not to do so. “There are…strange things that occur around her.”  
  
“Oh?” the priest motioned for the two of them to sit, and he sat down across from them. The little girl kept her eyes down, hidden beneath bangs as her long black hair curled around her ears. She kept her hands clenched and in her lap, not daring to touch it.  
  
“We first began to notice it when she was three,” the grandmother continued, eyes stern and concerned. The little girl didn’t look up as the older woman began to outline things of a most disturbing light. Aside from a poorly concealed flinch, the little girl did not move during the entire exchange.  
  
The fire in the garden, the attempt at suicide on the friend’s part, the teacher being stabbed by a jealous husband, the death of so many good friends, the traffic accidents, the sicknesses, the injuries…  
  
“We worry,” the grandmother concluded, “that something might be possessing Himawari.”  
  
The priest regarded the child with an indescribable face. His eyes were droopy, but his smile was warm. But the little girl, Himawari, refused to lift her gaze to look at the priest. If she said anything, it might make it all worse, it might make something _bad_ happen.  
  
The priest was silent for a long moment, looking at the girl, before slowly rising to his feet and retreating to a cupboard in the corner of the room where they converse. He dug around until he pulled out slips of paper and a pen and ink. He wrote something slowly, creating ofuda, chanting softly to himself. The slips of paper attached themselves to each corner of the room and the temperature within the room dropped a few degrees, and the world became just a bit quieter because of it.  
  
He returned to the two women, kneeling at Himawari’s side. He lifted a hand, calloused and worn from years or work at the shrine. He hesitated, and, with a smile, asked, “Would it be okay if I check, Himawari-chan?”  
  
The girl just nodded.  
  
His hand slowly moved along her, never touching her but slowly pulling his hand through the twists and turns of her aura, a deathly black and blue color. His brow knit in concentration, the priest said nothing as he worked.  
  
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he pulled back and shook his head.  
  
“There is nothing possessing this child. There is nothing attached—no demons, no ghouls, no gods of death… nothing. There is no special power. She is just a normal girl.”  
  
The grandmother physically relaxed. “So, it is only a psychological effect?”  
  
The priest shook his head and looked at Himawari with quiet sympathy, as if she were an extremely poor thing.  
  
“Himawari-chan,” he said softly, “Would it be alright if I spoke with your grandmother alone for a few minutes?”  
  
Himawari cringed, but nodded, slowly getting to her feet and padding from the room, her hands clenched together so as not to touch anything unnecessarily. She slid the door open and shut it behind her, slumping against the opposite wall. She stayed there, rigid, before sliding down the wall until she was sitting. She clung to her legs, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her forehead between them, trying to fight back the tears and the shame.  
  
She could still hear the priest’s voice:  
  
“That child will bring bad luck to everyone around her. There is no choice in who is affected. Other than her parents, as you told me. She would not have been born if they had bad luck, so they are the only ones exempt, I’d imagine. It doesn’t matter what it is, a discussion, a look, a touch… As long as there is a connection those other people will have bad luck. All people are the same. And I’d hazard a guess that it’s not just people. Whatever she is in contact with will undoubtedly be in danger of bad luck.”  
  
Himawari shook visibly, trying to restrain her emotions. She heard a small cough and jerked her head up, looking in surprise down the hallway towards where another little girl stood, her face blank and nearly identical to the old priest in the room with her grandmother. She wore a long, traditional kimono, watching her from around the corner of the wall.  
  
She forced a smile on her face when her eyes locked with the golden eyes down the hall. She tilted her head to the side, forcing the smile to pull her lips apart— _see,_ she thought, _everything is okay. Please don’t come over here._  
  
 _I’m cursed._  
  
 _I’m bad luck._  
  
The girl with the kimono did not move from her position, just watched her silently. She did not smile, she did not blink, she did not speak. She just stood, watching her stoically.  
  
Another cough, ragged and feeble, issued from the closed room Himawari sat near. She cringed at the sound.  
  
“Are you well?” she heard the priest ask.  
  
“I am getting very old, Haruka,” Himawari heard her grandmother say, “I’ve been ill for some time now. I am not long for this world…”  
  
“You shouldn’t say such things,” the priest answered, and murmured her grandmother’s name. “Would you like a prayer?”  
  
“We are all going to die eventually,” the woman said softly, and Himawari could picture the way the woman would be shaking her head, smiling benignly at the priest—a man who had, for many years, been a good friend of hers. “Don’t make that face. Even you must be aware of your impending mortality.”  
  
“Ah,” the priest replied after a lengthy pause, and it was unclear whether it was an acknowledgement or not.  
  
Himawari stood up, smiling, as she heard footsteps approaching the door. The door slid open and her grandmother smiled back at her grandchild. “Well, Himawari-chan, shall we go?”  
  
The girl nodded, and glanced over her shoulder at the young girl down the hall, still looking at her. She smiled and waved, before turning around and following after her grandmother.  
  
Haruka left the room after the two had left, watching them leave silently, expression thoughtful. He heard the soft clatter of feet in too large of sandals approaching him.  
  
“Who was she?” his grandson asked, clenching the fabric of his oversized kimono in his hand, looking up at his grandfather with an inquisitive face. His voice was soft, quiet, and faraway. He was an ill child.  
  
“An old friend,” his grandfather said lightly.  
  
“I mean the girl,” his grandson corrected, watching the old woman’s and the girl’s retreating backs before they turned the corner under the shrine entrance and disappeared from view forever.  
  
“Her name was Himawari,” Haruka said, taking his eyes away from where the two had disappeared as well. “She is from the Kunogi family.”  
  
His grandson said nothing, just looking up at his grandfather. “What did they want?”  
  
“That’s a private matter, Shizuka,” Haruka dismissed with a small head pat. “You’ll know when you’re older, in any case.”  
  
“Hn,” the boy in the kimono grunted. “Her smile was too sad.”  
  
“… Yes,” Haruka agreed and the wind played with his hair as he stood at the entrance of the shrine building. His eyes scanned the sky, the way the wind whipped through the leaves of the cherry trees. “It’s a very sad existence that she lives. But someday, she’ll be able to smile for real.”  
  
“I don’t like that smile,” Shizuka muttered, and his voice sounded distantly pouty. “It was unnerving.”  
  
“Not everyone smiles because they are happy,” his grandfather relented. “That child is not happy.”  
  
“Then why is she smiling so much?”  
  
“Because sometimes smiling is the only thing you can do, to keep from falling apart.”  
  
Shizuka said nothing.  
  
“But someday that smile will be because she isn’t falling apart, because she has something to hold on to.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
His grandfather smiled and clasped his grandson’s hand. “All in good time, Shizuka. The two of you are tied together.”  
  
His grandson said nothing, just giving him a slightly exasperated look.  
  
“Your existences’ are tied together with one another person, as well,” Haruka continued. “The three of you will come to know this in some time. But for now, it seems you managed to almost dress yourself on your own today.”  
  
“Hn.”  
  
His grandfather knelt down and began fixing the mistakes his grandson had made in the kimono dressing. The little boy coughed, his voice sounding weak and far away. Haruka’s eyes softened sadly as he smoothed a hand over his grandson’s hair.  
  
“But you’ll be alright,” he said quietly to himself. “Your aura is pure.”  
  
“Hn?”  
  
His grandfather shook his head. “You two will undoubtedly bring that child happiness.” He laughed. “You’ll all bring one another happiness.”  
  
Shizuka coughed again, his cheeks admittedly a distant shade of pink, though he for the life of him couldn’t discern why that would be the case. His grandfather continued to redress his grandson and once he was done, stood and dusted his hands free of nonexistent dust. He grasped his grandson’s hand and began walking back into the confines of their house.  
  
“Just keep moving forward, Shizuka. And don’t hesitate.”


End file.
